Thanks for visiting. On a daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

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The Blog for Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Our digest of, and commentary on today's Florida political news and punditry.

"Florida Republicans are demanding that television stations refuse to run an ad by the Democratic Party that focuses on Gov. Rick Scott pleading the 5th Amendment in a 2000 deposition to avoid incriminating himself in a massive Medicare fraud investigation."

The ad says “when Scott was deposed in lawsuits about his company, he took the 5th 75 times ... refused to answer questions because if he had, he might admit to committing a crime.”

In a letter to television stations, the state GOP asks that they refuse to run the ad. The party calls the claim false because Scott’s deposition wasn’t about the Medicare fraud investigation but part of a civil lawsuit in which a health care billing company accused Columbia/HCA of breach of contract.
Scott took the 5th Amendment in response to every question in the deposition except when he was asked his name, refusing even to say whether he ever worked for Columbia/HCA.

"Indeed, the civil case was not part of the Medicare fraud investigation. But Scott’s lawyer acknowledged in the deposition that his client was pleading the 5th because of the fraud investigation."

At the beginning of the deposition, Scott lawyer Steven Steinbach says, “because of the pendency of a number of criminal investigations relating to Columbia around the country, he’s going to follow my advice, out of prudence, (and) assert his constitutional privilege against giving testimony about himself.”

At one point during the deposition, the opposing lawyer asks Scott whether Columbia/HCA breached its contract with Nevada Communications Corp. “to cover up or obfuscate Columbia’s improper billing practices.”

Improper billing practices were the subject of the fraud investigation.

As with all the other questions, Scott cited the 5th Amendment and refused to answer.

"Charlie Crist has scrapped plans to go to Cuba this summer, citing time demands in his campaign for governor and delays in getting federal permission to visit the island nation."

Crist’s about-face was immediately called a “flip-flop” by Gov. Rick Scott’s campaign, and it follows a recent poll that showed his July plans were not popular with Cuban-American voters in Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county. Crist said his decision not to visit Cuba had nothing to do with public opinion in Miami-Dade, where sentiment about Cuba is more intense than anywhere else in America.

Crist caused a major stir last month when he called for lifting the 1962 U.S. embargo against Cuba, a stance that is gaining popularity with Florida voters. But he went a bold step further and said he wanted to see conditions there first-hand.

Crist said he still supports an end to the embargo and said he’ll plan a visit to Cuba next spring if he wins the election. . . .

The poll of 305 Miami-Dade Cuban-American voters by Bendixen & Amandi International, taken June 3-5, showed that nearly one in four, or 24 percent, would be less likely to vote for Crist if he visited Cuba and 5 percent would be more likely to vote for him. For 67 percent of voters, it made no difference.

However, among Cubans, 42 percent said they would be less likely to vote for Crist if he visited Cuba. The sample’s margin of error was 4.6 percentage points.

“In my opinion, there was virtually no political upside for him to travel to Cuba,” said Fernand Amandi, managing partner of Bendixen & Amandi, which has been polling Cuban-American voters for more than 35 years. “Charlie Crist could very well have been alienating Cuban voters who were otherwise predisposed to vote for him.”

The Bendixen & Amandi poll showed Crist is favored by 47 percent of county voters and Scott by 35 percent, with 18 percent undecided.

Marc Caputo writes that, it is "Too bad Florida International University’s latest poll, which showed Miami-Dade Cubans increasingly oppose the embargo of the island nation, didn’t ask respondents just two more questions:"

1. Do you favor lifting the embargo only if Cuba holds open and fair elections, releases political prisoners and allows for a free press and labor unions? . . .

Now that the erstwhile secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady is plugging her new book and publicly reversing her long-held positions on Cuba, her memory about the embargo, its effect and its history seem a little foggy.

“I recommended to President Obama that he take another look at our embargo,” Clinton writes in her book, Hard Choices. “It wasn’t achieving its goals, and it was holding back our broader agenda across Latin America.”

Putting aside the debate about the embargo’s effectiveness or fecklessness, just what did Clinton want Obama to “look at” and how? If she advocated that Obama try to lift the entire embargo, as reported elsewhere, it doesn’t make much sense.

Obama, or any president, can’t do it alone.

And Clinton can greatly credit one person for that: Bill Clinton, her husband.

As president, Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act in 1996 just after the Castro regime shot down the spotter planes of Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban-rafter aid group. Helms-Burton essentially “codified” the longstanding embargo by taking a series of executive orders, dating back to 1960, and making it federal law. . . .

Under Helms-Burton, the embargo would be lifted if Cuba held free and fair elections, frees political prisoners and allows for a free press and labor unions.

That’s why FIU, in its poll released last week, probably should have asked about this as well. Such a question would gauge the depth of support or opposition to the embargo once people were informed or reminded about its intent.